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Some Joke

Wednesday, 6 October 2004

I know these are just a few choice sentences, perhaps reported out of
context for dramatic effect, but it seems to me that Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer pretty much has his head up his ass with regard to consumer
electronics and DRM.

Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of
the piece — at least as far as corporate America, rather than
users, is concerned, Ballmer said: “We’ve had DRM in Windows
for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is
‘stolen’.”

I’d love to see his source for this. I have no source either, but I’d
place a wager with Mr. Ballmer that the most common source of music on
most iPods are unencrypted songs legally ripped from CDs. Most iPod
users I know own hundreds of CDs; it’d take ages to bootleg the amount
of music they already own on CD.

Certainly some iPods are filled with bootleg music. But I don’t think
most.

Quote #2 (ibid):

“Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of
it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to
use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it
harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use,”
he said.

The only thing “hard” about using DRM media is when you want to use it
in ways that the DRM forbids. It’s harder for my wife and me to share
DRM-protected music files on our iPods than it is for us to share
non-DRM files; somehow I doubt Microsoft plans to make this any easier.

Quote #3 (ibid):

“My 12-year-old at home doesn’t want to hear that he can’t
put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he
would like it,” he joked.

Why is this a joke? I’d argue that this is not a joke at all, and in
fact precisely describes the problem. Ballmer’s 12-year-old son is, I’m
guessing, smart enough to realize that there’s no technical reason
that would prevent him from putting “all the music that he wants in all
of the places that he would like it”, and that the reason he can’t is
that his father’s company is working on solutions aimed to please
entertainment executives rather than customers and users.

There are of course no prizes for guessing Ballmer’s pick to
win the battle of the digital home — and who he fingers as
the loser.

“There is no way that you can get there with Apple. The
critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation
video device,” he said.

Considering the iPod’s and iTunes’ support for Windows-based PCs, isn’t
it in fact a reasonable conclusion that the “critical mass” behind the
iPod’s still-growing popularity is already coming from the PC?

Ballmer would certainly be correct that anything that only works with
the Macintosh isn’t going to dominate home entertainment or personal
electronics — but the iPod strikes me as existence proof that Apple can
succeed outside the Mac user base.

The point of all this seems to be that Ballmer is saying that Apple
can’t lead the way here — where by “here” I’m talking about the
convergence between the computer, entertainment, and consumer
electronics industries — because the iPod allows for and even
encourages the use of non-DRM-protected digital media.

But I would argue that Apple is already leading the way in terms of
music — in large part because they don’t enforce draconian DRM
measures.

Microsoft’s successful operating systems and office software monopolies
came about largely because they’ve been successful selling them in the
corporate market. But the corporate market is irrelevant when it comes
to computer/entertainment convergence.

This isn’t about “I like Apple” and “I hate Microsoft”; it’s simply an
observation that successful consumer platforms are designed to make
consumers happy, not clueless entertainment industry executives. The
film industry fought against the VCR, but it became wildly successful
anyway, because consumers loved it. (And it’s worth noting that
Hollywood now makes more than 50 percent of its revenue from VHS and DVD
sales — their opposition wasn’t just futile, it was foolish.) The TV
industry largely despises TiVo — but people love it.

If Microsoft plans to build home entertainment systems that are designed
to please entertainment industry executives, I don’t see how they expect
their products to appeal to actual people.